In Foremother Love, Dana Murphy examines the importance of eighteenth-century poet Phillis Wheatley as a foundational figure for Black feminist criticism. Murphy establishes Phillis (as she refers to her) as a writer who wrote in response to and in conversation with other creators as well as a critic who was invested in sharing, explaining, and evaluating her own and others' work and contexts. Indeed, Phillis played a key role in the development of what Murphy calls "foremother love"--the Black feminist depiction of the love of an unrelated feminist ancestor as a legitimate relation for the practice of inheritance, mourning, liberation, and friendship. Drawing on the work of Barbara Christian, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and others, Murphy shows that Black feminist criticism becomes a transhistorical theorization when read in conjunction with Phillis's labor and vision. Revealing how Phillis lives on in Black feminist criticism, Murphy contends that foremother love is an ethic of critical care that implores readers to recognize the affective labor of all those working in the field.
The "The Trial of Phillis Wheatley" selected as winner in eLit awards for 2015 for drama, and named a Best Book of the year by Kirkus Review. "The Trial of Phillis Wheatley"By Ronald Wheatley In a preface to the book "Phillis Wheatley and Her Poetry," Professor Henry Louis Gates asked of an assemblage of distinguished men who gathered at the Governor's Council Chamber room in the Old State House ("Common House") in Boston in the fall of 1772: "Why had this august group been assembled? Why had it seen fit to summon this young African girl, scarcely eighteen years old, before it?" This group of 'the most respectable Characters in Boston, ' as it would later define itself, had assembled to question closely the African adolescent on the slender sheaf of poems that she claimed to have 'written by herself.'" This young "African girl" was Phillis Wheatley."The Trial of Phillis Wheatley" is a courtroom drama because it "depicts" what happened in the Governor's Council Chamber room that day. However, as important as she is to our history and to the drama, the play is not just about Phillis. The play is also about the men in that room and the test that they were facing. The test of overcoming their own prejudices to be willing to put their signature on a document attesting that this African household slave of John and Susannah Wheatley had written a number of poemscompiled in a small manuscript. A Negro slave author was a phenomenon that was unique to these men, to Boston, and to a young America. Only if the largely older and all white men in that room were willing to put their names to this attestation would this manuscript have a chance of being published. The consequences of this action for these men were possible ridicule, and the threat of physical violence from an external force, the Boston gang, under theleadership of Ebenezer Mackintosh, street brawler and charismatic leader of the South End Gang.The final verdict would change American History
This is the remarkable story of Phillis Wheatley, who is born into an African family of griots, or storytellers, but captured by slave raiders and forced aboard a slave ship, where appalling conditions spell death for many of her companions. Numerous sharks follow the ship, feeding on the corpses of slaves thrown overboard. Weakened by the voyage and near death in a Boston slave market, Wheatley is bought by a kind family who nurses her back to health and teaches her to read and write. Soon her mistress recognizes that the girl is a quick learner and talented. At the age of 12, a torrent of poetry begins to flow out of Wheatley. Proud of her achievements, her mistress organizes readings in Boston's finest parlors and drawing rooms, and Wheatley's fame spreads. But even when many in Boston are calling her a prodigy and a genius, some remain unsure that a slave should be able to write, much less write poetry. When Phillis travels to London she is a media sensation, feted by the cream of English society. A book of her poems is published, and she finally gains her freedom. This amazing story, wide in scope, is based on fact and told convincingly from young Wheatley's point of view.
The first African American to publish a book on any subject, poet Phillis Wheatley (1753?–1784) has long been denigrated by literary critics who refused to believe that a black woman could produce such dense, intellectual work, let alone influence Romantic-period giants like Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson once declared that “the compositions published under her name are below dignity of criticism.” In recent decades, however, Wheatley’s work has come under new scrutiny as the literature of the eighteenth century and the impact of African American literature have been reconceived. In these never-before-published essays, fourteen prominent Wheatley scholars consider her work from a variety of angles, affirming her rise into the first rank of American writers. The pieces in the first section show that perhaps the most substantial measure of Wheatley’s multilayered texts resides in her deft handling of classical materials. The contributors consider Wheatley’s references to Virgil’s Aeneid and Georgics and to the feminine figure Dido as well as her subversive critique of white readers attracted to her adaptation of familiar classics. They also discuss Wheatley’s use of the Homeric Trojan horse and eighteenth-century verse to mask her ambitions for freedom and her treatment of the classics as political tools. Engaging Wheatley’s multilayered texts with innovative approaches, the essays in the second section recontextualize her rich manuscripts and demonstrate how her late-eighteenth-century works remain both current and timeless. They ponder Wheatley’s verse within the framework of queer theory, the concepts of political theorist Hannah Arendt, rhetoric, African studies, eighteenth-century “salon culture,” and the theoretics of imagination. Together, these essays reveal the depth of Phillis Wheatley’s literary achievement and present concrete evidence that her extant oeuvre merits still further scrutiny. John C. Shields is Distinguished Professor of English at Illinois State University. He is the editor of The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley and author of The American Aeneas: Classical Origins of the American Self, a Choice Outstanding Academic Book; Phillis Wheatley and the Romantics; and Phillis Wheatley’s Poetics of Liberation; and awarded honorable mention in competition for the American Comparative Literature Association’s Harry Levin Prize. As well, Shields serves as director of the Center for Classicism and American Culture and General Editor for the series of monographs on Classicism in American Culture to be published by the University of Tennessee Press. Eric D. Lamore is an assistant professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, and a contributor to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry.
Born in Africa in 1753, Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped at the age of seven and sold into slavery. At nineteen, she became the first Black American poet to publish a book, Poems on Various Subjects: Religious and Moral, on which this volume is based. Wheatley's poetry created a sensation throughout the English-speaking world, and the young poet read her work in aristocratic drawing rooms on both sides of the Atlantic. The London Chronicle went so far as to declare her "perhaps one of the greatest instances of pure, unassisted genius that the world ever produced." Wheatley's elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses into the origins of African-American literary traditions. Most of the poems express the effects of her religious and classical New England education, consisting of elegies for the departed and odes to Christian salvation. This edition of Wheatley's historic works includes letters and a biographical note written by one of the poet's descendants. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "On Being Brought from Africa to America."
Born in Africa in 1753, Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped at the age of seven and sold into slavery. At nineteen, she became the first Black American poet to publish a book, Poems on Various Subjects: Religious and Moral, on which this volume is based. Wheatley's poetry created a sensation throughout the English-speaking world, and the young poet read her work in aristocratic drawing rooms on both sides of the Atlantic. The London Chronicle went so far as to declare her "perhaps one of the greatest instances of pure, unassisted genius that the world ever produced." Wheatley's elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses into the origins of African-American literary traditions. Most of the poems express the effects of her religious and classical New England education, consisting of elegies for the departed and odes to Christian salvation. This edition of Wheatley's historic works includes letters and a biographical note written by one of the poet's descendants. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "On Being Brought from Africa to America."
As can be easily understood presenting an exact chronicle of the facts in the life of a 16th Century playwright is often difficult. Thomas Lodge is no exception. Thomas Lodge, born around 1558 in west Ham, was the second son of Sir Thomas Lodge, the Lord Mayor of London, and his third wife Anne. Lodge was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and thence to Trinity College, Oxford; taking his BA in 1577 and his MA in 1581. Lodge, disregarded his parents career wishes in order to take up literature. When the penitent Stephen Gosson published his Schoole of Abuse in 1579, Lodge responded with Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays (1579 or 1580). His pamphlet was banned, but appears to have been circulated privately. Already in 1580 Lodge had published a volume of poems entitled Scillaes Metamorphosis, Enterlaced with the Unfortunate Love of Glaucus, also more briefly known as Glaucus and Scilla. Lodge seems to have married his first wife Joan in or shortly before 1583, when, "impressed with the uncertainty of human life", he made a will. The marriage of Lodge and Joan produced a daughter, Mary. The debate in pamphlets between Lodge and Gosson continued with Gosson's Playes Confuted in Five Actions; and Lodge retorting with his Alarum Against Usurers (1585)-a "tract for the times". Lodge appears to have been at sea on a number of long voyages. Many nations endorsed these tactics and it seems fairly safe to suggest that these voyages were a source of revenue which would keep Joan and Mary with their heads above water. During the expedition to Terceira and the Canaries (around 1586), to set aside the tedium of his voyage, Lodge composed his prose tale of Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacie, which, printed in 1590, would later be used by Shakespeare as the basis for As You Like It. Before starting on his next voyage, this time to South America, Lodge published a historical romance, The History of Robert, Second Duke of Normandy, surnamed Robert the Devil; and he left behind him for publication Catharos Diogenes in his Singularity, a discourse on the immorality of Athens (London). Both appeared in 1591. It is thought that in 1590, together with Greene, he wrote A Looking Glass for London and England (published 1594). He had already written The Wounds of Civil War (produced perhaps as early as 1587, and published in 1594, and put on as a play reading at the Globe Theatre on 7 February 1606), a good second-rate piece in the half-chronicle fashion of its age. The composition of Phillis, a volume and an early sonnet cycle sequence (an increasingly popular format in Elizabethan times), was published with the narrative poem, The Complaynte of Elsired, in 1593. A Fig for Momus was published in 1595 and gained him the accolade of being the earliest English satiristIn the latter part of his life-possibly about 1596, when he published his Wits Miserie and the World's Madnesse, which is dated from Low Leyton in Essex, and the religious tract Prosopopeia (if, as seems probable, it was his), in which he repents of his "lewd lines" of other days-he became a Catholic and engaged in the practice of medicine, for which Wood says he qualified himself by a degree at Avignon, in France, in 1600. Two years later he received the degree of M.D. from Oxford University. Over the years he was increasingly recognized as a distinguished physician and finally worked from Old Fish Street in the parish of St. Mary Magdalen. Thomas Lodge died in London, most probably during an outbreak of the plague, in 1625.
Middle-Grade Biography Highlights Phillis Wheatley’s Life of Faith, Determination, and Intellect Phillis Wheatley, ripped away from her family and sold into a life of slavery, would one day negotiate her way to freedom. Unwilling to succumb to the brokenness around her, Wheatley believed God had a redemptive plan for her life. Through her poetry and prayer, Wheatley beautifully expressed her trust in the Lord and called the nation and important American figures to Christ, while advocating for freedom from injustices that plagued the country. This short and lively biography invites middle-grade readers to explore the life of Phillis Wheatley, highlighting her inspiring testimony and remarkable work as a poet, abolitionist, and wife. Through her story, readers learn that God works even in the harshest circumstances, ensuring that nothing can separate them from his love, word, and salvation. Featuring illustrations, maps, timelines, bonus sidebars, and study questions, this addition to the Lives of Faith and Grace series engages kids ages 8–13 in the drama of history, showing how God worked in the past through ordinary people like them. Lively Biography: Explores the influential life of Phillis Wheatley, a remarkable African poet who inspired spiritual and social change through a revival of true biblical Christianity Written for Kids Ages 8–13: This short format includes illustrations, maps, timelines, and bonus sidebars that help explain the history of slavery, the Revolutionary War, and other events of the 18th century Honest: Details the cruel realities of slavery, and explains its presence in the Bible as a sinful result of the fall Inspiring Testimony: Phillis Wheatley believed that God uses all circumstances, including her own suffering, for his glory and her good Part of the Lives of Faith and Grace Series: Engages kids with the real-life stories of Christian men and women from history
A fictionalized biography of the eighteenth-century African woman who, as a child, was brought to New England to be a slave, and after publishing her first poem when a teenager, gained renown throughout the colonies as an important black American poet.
"Lasky shows not only the facts of Wheatley's life but also the pain of being an accomplished black woman in a segregated world." -- Booklist In 1761, a young girl was sold to the Wheatley family in Boston, who named her Phillis after the slave schooner that had carried her. Kidnapped from her home in Africa and shipped to America, she'd had everything taken from her-her family, her name, and her language. But Phillis had a passion to learn. Amid the tumult of the Revolutionary War, Phillis Wheatley became a poet and ultimately had a book of verse published, establishing herself as the first African- American woman poet this country had ever known.Back matter includes an author's note, an illustrator's note, sources, and an index.
"It is not surprising that the execution of a woman, by burning, so lately as when Shirley was governor, -a period when the province had greatly advanced in culture and refinement, -should seem to any one incredible. Indeed, even so critical and thorough a student of our provincial history as our late distinguished associate, Dr. Palfrey, once wrote to me inquiring if the rumor of such a proceeding had any foundation in fact, and if so, whether the execution took place according to law, or by the impulse of an infuriated mob. It gave me great satisfaction to be able to settle his doubts on this subject by referring him to the records of the Superior Court of Judicature, where the judgment, from which I shall presently read to you, and a copy of which I sent to him, appears at length."
Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784) was an American freed slave and poet who wrote the first book of poetry by an African-American. Sold into slavery in West Africa at the age of around seven, she was taken to North America, where she served the Wheatley family of Boston. Phillis was tutored in reading and writing by Mary, the Wheatleys' 18-year-old daughter, and was reading Latin and Greek classics from the age of twelve. Encouraged by the progressive Wheatleys who recognised her incredible literary talent, she wrote "To the University of Cambridge" when she was 14. By 20 had found patronage in Selina Hastings, countess of Huntingdon. Her works garnered acclaim in both England and the colonies, and she became the first African American to make a living as a poet. This volume contains a fantastic collection of assorted writings by various authors on the subject of Wheatley, exploring her interesting life and influential work. Contents include: "Introduction from Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, 1834", "Letter from George Washington to Phillis", "An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley by Jupiter Hammon", "A Memoir from Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, 1834", "Phillis Wheatley by William Wells Brown", "Phillis Wheatley by L. Maria Child", "Phillis Wheatley by A. Mott And M. S. Wood", "An Excerpt by George Washington Williams", "Phillis Wheatley by Benjamin Griffith Brawley", "Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley by Robert Thomas Kerlin", etc. Brilliant Women are proudly publishing this brand new collection of classic essays and excerpts for a new generation of readers.
